Soaring demand for copper will help drive mergers, BHP CEO says
Demand for copper, a key element in the energy transition, is set to rise by 70% to 100% by 2050, Mike Henry said
Shares in Aurubis fell as much as 8.8% on Monday after third-quarter earnings at Europe’s largest copper producer missed expectations.
The group’s quarterly earnings before tax (EBT) rose five-fold to 90 million euros ($98 million) from the same period last year, which was affected by a major metals theft at its smelting business.
But that missed analysts’ average forecast of 99 million euros in a company-provided poll.
Compared to two years ago, earnings were down 13%.
Third-quarter EBT at Aurubis’s custom smelting and products business was 82 million euros, also down 13% from fiscal 2021-22, the last comparable year after the company revised down last year’s results for the segment.
Revenue for the smelting business was down 7% on the same time in 2021-22.
One trader said the results left analysts’ EBT expectations for the year of 467 million euros looking “rather optimistic”.
“Good metal prices should have compensated for the big maintenance shutdown in Hamburg,” he said, referring to planned maintenance that concluded in July.
Copper prices have fallen about 18% from a record achieved in May but are still high by historical standards. Recent weak US jobs and Chinese factory data has depressed prices.
Metzler analyst Thomas Schulte-Vorwick said the earnings miss was probably due to higher than expected costs related to the Hamburg shutdown and to a new plant being opened in the United States.
Aurubis’ share price was likely to depend in the coming months on copper prices, with seemingly weak production in the US and China “posing the greatest risk”, he added.
Aurubis, which also deals in metals such as gold and platinum, reiterated its full-year guidance for EBT of 380-480 million euros and pointed out that its quarterly result was the best ever with a major plant shutdown.
($1 = 0.9147 euros)
(By Louis van Boxel-Woolf in Gdansk; Editing by Milla Nissi and Mark Potter)
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